Budget tips

There are two people in my family who have access to our checking account: my wife, and myself.  When we first got married, I about went crazy trying to balance my budget.  I could remember well enough when I bought something at Wal-mart for $12.89 that it was actually an accessory for my computer, not groceries.  So I could remember to take it out of my "Gadgets" envelope.  But I had no idea what my wife bought.

We now have a box in our house where we stash receipts.  It took a while to get into the habit, but now whenever I buy something, I stick the receipt in my wallet.  When my wife buys something, she sticks the receipt in her purse.  Once in a while, I empty out the receipts from my wallet into this box, and she does the same.  To be honest, we don't save receipts for every purchase.  On the bank statement, it's obvious when a purchase is for gas.  There's no need to save those receipts.  It's more for the other places we shop where the purpose might be ambiguous.

Now when I balance the budget, it makes it much easier to track our spending.  We have gotten so used to this, in fact, that we frequently write on the receipts too, just to record more details about the purchase.  We will write things like "food for cook-out with family" or "present for dad's birthday."  This has made balancing our budget a breeze.